Then there is the techinique of relabelling, exemplified by Epistetus' advice to think of a crowd as a festival.  It can help to ask yourself whether your situation is really bad, or merely unexpected: recently people who thought they had one the national lottery, and then found that they had made a mistake and had not got the winning number, committed suicide.  Why?  What is bad about not winning the lottery?  A week earlier, they thought there was nothing bad about it.  The difference is that now failure to win the lottery is unexpected.  They have confused the unexpected with the bad (161f).

This reminds me of some of the interesting psychological and economic literature on happiness I read a year or two ago.  People report being less happy after having some good and losing it than if they'd never had that good at all.  But, one would think, it would be better to have had that good for some period of time than not at all.

Do you think injustice can only be brought about by human action or do you think there is some "natural" sense of injustice?

So consider a possible world (let's call it Q) as much as like the actual world a possible except for the following and all entailed by it: in Q, there are no intentional agents.  (I'm bracketing the existence of God in Q, though for reasons that should be pretty obvious below, I don't think anything hangs on this.)  So the question is this:

Could there be injustice in Q?

My colleague's 'strong' intuition is that the answer is 'no'.  But I'm not so sure.

If we take injustice to be the vice opposed to the virtue of injustice, then I think that strictly speaking there could not be injustice (or justice) without intentional agency, since I take it that the former (virtue and vice) depends upon the latter (intentional agency).  But I still think that there could be some sence of injustice (and justice) in Q.  Following Aquinas, I think of the object of justice as the right--roughly, whatever is due to an individual (or community) as established by natural law. 

In this sense, it seems to be that there could be injustice in Q.  Suppose in Q that there are two hedgehogs who are both equally good (in whatever the relavant sorts of hedgehog-goodness there are).  One of the hedgehogs has the ideal hedgehog life while the other suffers horribly--hunger, illness, premature death of his kin, you name it.  It seems that there is some sense of injustice that has befallen this hedgehog, since he seems to be due the same as the other.  So this makes me think there can be some form of injustice apart apart from intentional agency. 

But I'll admit I'm not sure what to think about such a possibliity.  Any thoughts?

Today, I assigned his speech as part of a paper assignment for my Intro students:

At the heart of Wallace's speech is what he calls "the single most pervasive cliché in the commencement speech genre," namely the claim "that a liberal arts education is not so much about filling you up with knowledge as it is about 'teaching you how to think'."

 

In a paper of approximately 4 typed, double-spaced pages, do the following:

 

(1)               explain what Wallace means by the claim that a liberal arts education "teaches you how to think," and

(2)               discuss the role that philosophy can and should play in a liberal arts education.

 

With respect to (1), you will want to interact closely and thoroughly with Wallace's speech.  With respect to (2), you should avoid 'waxing poetically'.  Instead, you should address this part of the paper from the philosophers that we've examined so far this term.  How is it that Russell's, Plato's, Augustine's, and Descartes' texts can help achieve the goals that Wallace mentions?  Be explicit, making sure to incorporate specifics from the readings.

Less than 12 hours after passing out this assignment, I received the following email from a student in a section of my Intro class:

Dr. Timpe -

I don't know where you found this speech, but being that I will graduate in less than 4 weeks, it rings completely true for me. I am so inspired to not only write this paper, but get out into the real world and practice what this guy is talking about. It's amazing...

So I guess I'm saying thanks for the homework! Have a good weekend & see you on Monday.

I'd been fairly frustrated with my classes this week, as they weren't much motivated to work or care.  Evidently even in bad weeks, some of them get it. 

I'm still having trouble posting pictures on this blog, but if you click here, you can see a text cloud of Arguing about Religion via Wordle.  I made it from the page proofs, which is why 'page' is featured so prominently. I have no explanation for the 11:51:15:10:08 near the upper left.

I'm told by my editor that the book will be on display at the Eastern APA, and I look forward to seeing it there.  It's suppose to be available for purchase in January.

I've loved working with Routledge.  They even let me suggest art for the cover, and ended up going with one of my suggestions.  A draft of the cover is here (I've requested that the color be darker, more of a burnt orange).

I can now turn my attention to pulling together all the essays for my remaining book project. 

Remember how nice it was when you used to have time to sleep?

So I figure that I have to average 1.407895 pages/hour for the next 19 days.  That doesn't sound so bad until you realize that that's non-stop.  If I sleep at night, I'll be 11.26316 pages behind.  Good thing I don't have any grading or other work to do for a while.  Oh, wait...

Just by doing this post I'm 3 column inches in the hole.

Update: I forgot to mention that I have to also compile the index during the same time.

• total number of course evaluations:  619 
• total number rating my courses as "outstanding":  257
• total number rating my courses as "above average":  257
• % students rating my courses as "outstanding": 42
• % students rating my courses as "outstanding" or "above average": 84
• total number rating me an "outstanding" instructor:  417
• total number rating me an "above average" instructor:  147
• % students rating me an "outstanding" instructor:  67
• % students rating me an "outstanding" or "above average" instructor:  91

These numbers are up from my summary a year ago.  I must say that I was pleased (and perhaps a little surprised) to see these results.

Next week, I should get the page proofs for Arguing about Religion, and have about 3 weeks to work through them.  I also have to finish the editing work for Metaphysics and God in the next 6 weeks or so.  I'm giving a paper a conference in Riverside at the end of the month, and then go to New York to give a pair of lectures the following week. 

The way it's shaping up, I think it's going to be a rough fall.  I've planned a little get away for the three of us next week to recharge a bit before the full brunt of the craziness hits.  We're heading up to Palm Springs for a couple of days.  Photos of the hotel here (I still can't get pictures to post on this blog.)

I'm promising (publicly, no less!) that I won't take the laptop with us (though I may have to take page proofs). 

I've got a great wife, a beautiful son--both of whom I adore--a job I love, and more goods in my life than I can contain.  I can live with the busyness and stress.

This past monday, I participated in my first ever public debate.  The debate, which was sponsored by USD's philosophy club, was entitled "To Vote or Not to Vote."  My sparring partner in the debate was Dr. Dominguez of the political science department here at USD.  About 70 students showed up for the debate.

In the debate, I argued for 3 claims, none of which are original to me:

• if you're going to vote, you should vote absentee (I'm pretty sure I first saw this argument made by Thomas Nadelhoffer, but I can't find the blog post)
• if you're going to vote, you ought to vote well, i.e., not vote badly (this argument was largely influenced by Jason Brennan)
• that democracy is flawed insofar as it values quantity of opinion over quality of opinion (think Plato's Crito)

The debate went really well, and there was a good period of questions and discussion afterwards.  As the hubub was dying down, two students approached.  They were from the Vista, USD's student newspaper.  They asked if I had anything else to say.  Now, the Vista isn't known for its accuracy; case in point, a few weeks back it reported that the Hadron collider is 27 meters across.  So, knowing its track record, I got a bit worried.  I told the students that as long as they reported accurately, I had nothing to add to what I said in the debate.

On wednesday, the front page of the Vista reports that "the highlight of the discussion was Dr. Kevin Timpe's unusual view that voting is immoral."  GROAN. 

I vascilate between amused and irritated.  My letter to the editor, which I've submitted for next week's edition, is below the fold.

• an introductory talk entitled "Exploring the Problem of Evil at Tinker Creek"
• a research talk entitled "Truthmaking and Sourcehood"

I think that this is an excellect series.  SUNY-Fredonia should be proud of it, and I am honored to contribute.

I've posted someting over at Experimental Philosophy about something I'm trying in my metaphysics course this fall.

(And yes, I'm aware of the rather atrocious price.  Nothing I can do about that except anticipate it's release in paperback.  Unfortunately, that won't be for two years.  I'm also perplexed by the degree to which the price is fluxuating.  Yesterday, with the discount, it was $94, and a few days before that it was $96.)

Available here.

Stanford University has put out an interesting (98 page) document on dual-career academic couples.  The full report can be found here.  The survey was of 9043 full-time faculty at 13 research universities.   

Some of the more interesting results, at least to me, are as follows:

General statistics

Ÿ         36% of academics have an academic spouse; this is the same percentage as those with a working, non-academic spouse

Ÿ         the percentage of female academics with an academic spouse is 40%; the percentage of male academics with an academic spouse is 34%

Ÿ         woman academics are more likely to be single than their male counterparts (21% vs 10%)

Ÿ         minority academics are more likely to be single than their non-minority counterparts (25% vs. 13%)

Dual Hires

Ÿ         10% of faculty hires are part of dual hires

Ÿ         being part of a dual hires is almost twice as likely for female faculty as for male faculty (13% vs. 7%)

Ÿ         one is more than twice as likely to be part of a dual hire if one is a full or endowed professor than if one is either an associate or assistant professor

Ÿ         the frequency of dual hires is increasing:  3% of all hires in 1970s were dual hires; 7% in 1980s; 9% in 1990s: 13% in 2000s

Ÿ         73% of dual hires have degree in same field